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Questions about your book 'Brain Science'

שו"תQuestions about your book 'Brain Science'
שאל לפני 5 שנים

In this book you base (as far as I understand) your decision on the issue of libertarianism versus determinism on our intuition as humans. (Although you leave room in this space for stubborn Brodians to declare different intuitions)
You've given a few intuitions that your determinist friend will have to admit are an illusion, and you've conducted a few thought experiments to test the veracity of his illusion. Great.
But I didn't understand why your view was superior, even on an intuitive level.
You also admitted (p. 399) that there are certain aspects of illusion, even though we do not choose, we have the feeling that we do choose. You gave as an example phantom pain and the Fete Morgana. The problem with the example is that what you brought up is a marginal phenomenon to illustrate that there is an exception to the rule that does not teach about the rule [1] to show the opposite situation. That there is a rule that does not teach anything about the rule. That is, in the picture you drew, there is only a choice where it is a value versus an impulse (since in a value versus a value all that is left for the 'voter' to do is to check which value is greater) and only the right to veto if the impulse found its way to take action against the 'neutral mental will'. That is, 'naturally' it was supposed to roll towards the impulse, and then the mental person comes along and confronts it with a value and vetoes the 'gap'. And what about all our decisions about what to eat for breakfast? Illusion. And what about our choice whether to voluntarily distribute flyers of the party 'The Great Crocodiles' or dedicate our free time to fighting hard drugs? Mathematics. What else do we have to choose from? Most of the day we are engaged in mathematics (especially if we are physicists) or in random picking..
You also claimed that if we create a soft libertarian picture in which we admit that there are mountains and valleys, and they influence the choice, we will be able to easily deal with Libet's RP, since the urge to do precedes the decision (and it is the rebel) and then our 'choose to choose' arrives and decides whether to choose to veto and go against nature. (In this you also explained the weakness of the will, which is also not exactly intuitive). And my question is what causes the urge to be natural and the value to be X (unnatural? mental? angelic? heavenly?)? After all, this entire system that divides between values ​​and urges is also in my physical brain! It is already established there that murder is a value/non-value, and that wealth is an urge (although you rightly wrote on page 389 that it is possible for a person for whom wealth is a value). Why does the urge not to murder (because I heard how obscene it is from my kindergarten teacher Bruria and my handyman Melior) in order to inherit the fat wallet found in my victim's pocket (which would be 'unwillingly' because of the roadblocks) receive the title 'value' in your system of concepts? And don't say that this is also intuition, because there are many 'values' that are intuitively disputed as to whether they are true or not. And what can you say about them? Moreover, your reliance on intuition is nothing more than intuition, and in this you condemn the fatalists who believe in things that they must think because they were forced to think that way.
And why do you claim there is a philosophical difference between what you called picking and choosing? After all, if a person has a mental system that can create force fields that will move things in the brain, why wouldn't he also have this mental power to decide whether to go to the movies tonight or scratch his back?
In general, I did not understand the meaning of the mentality in your teaching. After all, even if the yellow color in my consciousness is not the wavelength, but the result of such a wavelength hitting my eye, and the color itself is a different thing that exists only in my consciousness, there is always a correspondence between the wavelengths and my consciousness. And although we do not usually say, 'My body believes in the coming of the Messiah,' but in fact the believer is my brain! It creates (as a result of education) the network of neurons that informs me that the Messiah will come whenever I hesitate about it. Every time my body encounters this question (both through a question that came to my ear, and through another consciousness that jumped into my physical mind), the body immediately answers and produces consciousness that the Messiah will indeed come! There is no consciousness without brain activity, so where does the certainty come from that there can be a consciousness that will produce brain activity? And if that were the case, we would have to see a lot of consciousness (only values, of course) running around in our minds, and not even a wave scanner would be able to see them, except for 'us' (and not 'our bodies') no one would notice them.
And we will ponder the question – a newborn baby, does he also have a mentality that can create force fields? Does he have a choice (I don't know if he is aware of this intuitively, anyway) whether to cry when he is hungry? If not, when was that mentality created in him? What causes it to crystallize at a certain time? If the neurons created it, then it would seem to be subject to them. Apparently something else creates it at a certain point, and then suddenly the person is struck by a burst of freedom that is intuitively felt in the deepest and most personal recesses of his 'self'. It hasn't happened to me. Maybe it will happen to me one day against my will.
[1] Without addressing the problematic nature of the example. For the person really sees and really feels pain. There is stimulation in these sensory areas of the brain for various reasons. Whereas here the person does not really choose.


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0 Answers
מיכי צוות ענה לפני 5 שנים
I read it quickly (too long). Not all of these situations have a sense of choice. There is a sense of calculation. When there is a choice between values ​​or a value versus an instinct, then there is a sense of choice. People do not distinguish between these feelings and therefore think that in all of them we have a sense of choice, which is not the case. One of the goals of the book is to present to people the distinctions so that they can examine themselves again. This is precisely the distinction between a feeling that accompanies picking and a feeling that accompanies choosing. I don't know when the ability to choose enters a person, but a baby probably doesn't have such an ability, or at least it doesn't materialize. It enters gradually and takes up more and more space until you become an adult.

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